Massive Covid Spikes in These 21 States May Explain Why Everyone You Know Seems to Have It Right Now

The United States is in the midst of a summer COVID wave, according to the Center for Disease Control’s wastewater monitoring system, which has found “very high” levels of virus in 21 states.

The states categorized as having a “very high” presence of the virus in its water are Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming, plus the District of Columbia.

A “high” presence of the virus was found in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusets, Missouri, Montana, South Carolina, Tennesee, and Virginia. 

The rate of positive COVID tests is also on the rise, the CDC reports —up to 12.6% from 11.4% the previous week.

Meanwhile, the state that was at the forefront of the 2020 COVID pandemic, New York, was the only state to report “low” levels of the virus in its wastewater.

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All other states reported “moderate” levels of the virus — except for North Dakota, which did not report any data for the program.

The CDC monitors wastewater to “show changes in disease trends before trends are seen in clinical cases.” The system provides an efficient overview of the presence of infectious diseases such as -

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COVID, as “toilet flush to results only takes about five to seven days,” the agency says.

COVID has historically spiked in the summer. “When we’re outdoors, it’s difficult for COVID to transmit, but it’s been so oppressively hot, particularly in the Southwest United States, and people are just spending a lot more time indoors,” Andrew Pekosz, a professor of microbiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told The Washington Post.

The wave is also fueled by new COVID KP.2 strains — subvariants of the highly infectious Omicron strain, as Yale Medicine explains — and its related variant, LB. 1. These account for more than 90% of the new cases of COVID, the CDC’s variant tracker reports.

Vaccine rates are down as well, as the most recent data from the CDC’s vaccine tracking system says only 22.5% of adults have received an updated COVID vaccine since last September.

Last month, the Food and Drug Administration issued an advisory to COVID vaccine manufacturers to target the KP.2 variant, with updated vaccines expected in the fall.

"Every day of 2024 remaining is likely to have more transmission than today," Dr. Michael Hoerger, Assistant Professor at Tulane University School of Medicine, who leads the COVID forecasting model, the Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative, told TODAY.

"People should really be taking the rest of the year very seriously." 

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